A Beginner’s Guide to Dental Crowns

A quick guide to dental crowns to help you learn the basics about this procedure.

Our teeth are an important part of our buccal cavity. They perform the important functions of grinding and chewing the food to make it more digestible.

Over time, teeth get damaged due to wear and tear or certain bacterial infections cause dental cavities and decay. Damaged teeth can’t perform their regular functions efficiently unless they are repaired.

Dental crowns are one such way of restoring a tooth to its original strength and shape. This guide to dental crowns will look at what are dental crowns, their types, and their benefits.

What are Dental Crowns?

Dental crowns are synthetic caps that resemble a tooth. They are placed over the broken or damaged tooth after it has been treated. Dental crowns improve the appearance of the tooth and restore the damaged tooth to its previous strength.

Who Needs A Dental Crown?

Patients who suffer from the following conditions require dental crowns:

• Weakened tooth due to dental decay or cracked tooth due to accident.
• To cover the remaining part of the tooth has been chipped away.
• To provide support to a tooth with which has undergone root canal surgery and there isn’t much tooth material left.
• To provide support to a dental bridge.
• As a covering for misaligned and discolored teeth.
• To provide a cover for dental implants.

What are Some Common Materials for Dental Crowns?

Dental crowns are made of various materials. Let’s take a look at the most common dental crown materials:

Metal

• Dental crowns made of metal are strong and can withstand force and pressure. They are not prone to damage like other materials and rarely break or chip away. One positive point of metal crowns is that they only require a small quantity of tooth to be removed for their placement.

Chromium, gold, nickel, and palladium are some of the most common metals used for metal crowns. The downside of metal crowns is that they don’t resemble the natural tooth due to their metallic color. Hence, they are not a good choice for frontal teeth.

All-ceramic or All-Porcelain

• These crowns are made of either ceramic or porcelain. Porcelain is a natural-looking translucent ceramic material. Crowns made from porcelain blend in well with remaining teeth. They are a good choice for frontal teeth.

On the downside, they aren’t as strong as metal or porcelain fused to metal crowns.

All Resin Crowns

• Resin is a highly viscous material that is either obtained from plants or is synthetically manufactured. Dental crowns made from resin substances won’t cost much but on the downside, they are not as sturdy as metal crowns.

Resin crowns deteriorate faster than all other types of crowns.

Benefits of Dental Crowns

Dental crowns offer the following benefits:

• Dental crowns offer the best protection and strength to a compromised tooth. Without a dental crown, the compromised tooth will be exposed to more damage from the usual chewing and grinding actions.
• Provide aesthetically pleasing appearance. Dental crowns restore the original shape of a fractured tooth. In this regard, ceramic crowns are best because they are natural-looking and blend in well with the remaining teeth.
• Dental crowns are highly durable. If taken good care of, they last for fifteen years or more. They are the most long-lasting of all dental restoration treatments.
• Dental crowns have many purposes. They are used as caps for damaged teeth and as protection for root canal treated teeth.

A trained dentist knows how to fix a dental crown as per your needs. If you are residing in Westmont IL, visit Celebrity Smiles and General Dentistry. They offer excellent services for crown placement.